When President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated in January, he’ll assume the powers of the presidency with a surer sense of what he wants to accomplish and how to get it done, after four years on the job and four years planning his return.
A Republican-controlled Senate likely puts his nominees on a glide path to confirmation, while the question of House control is still being determined.
Here’s what may be in store for Trump’s second term, based on what he’s said since he left office in 2021.
Pardoning Jan. 6 rioters
Trump has praised those who breached the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, as “patriots” and referred to them as “hostages” of a Justice Department “weaponized” against him. He has said that those who were arrested as a result of their actions during the Capitol riot should be freed, and he vowed to pardon a “large portion” of the more than 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.
Even before his election victory, defendants were trying to delay their cases, anticipating pardons. At least one defendant invoked Trump’s win in an effort to delay proceedings in his case; lawyers for 21-year-old Christopher Carnell said in a filing the day after the election that Trump has “made multiple clemency promises” to Jan. 6 defendants and wrote that Carnell is “expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”
They said Carnell “is now awaiting further information from the Office of the President-elect regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.” His request was swiftly denied.
At a recent Trump rally in North Carolina, an attendee yelled at Trump to “pardon the January sixers.” Trump looked at the man and replied, “Yeah, it’s true.”
Firing special counsel Jack Smith
Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt recently that he’d fire special counsel Jack Smith, who has brought two federal criminal indictments against him, “within two seconds” of becoming president. Smith was appointed independent special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump’s federal criminal investigations and cases.
Dispensing with criminal cases against him
The Justice Department and special counsel Jack Smith’s office are engaged in active discussions about how to wind down the ongoing federal prosecutions against President-elect Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the talks.
At the center of the discussions is the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president and the need to enable a smooth transition to a second term in the White House for Trump, the sources said.
Experts told CBS News the Justice Department is likely to drop Trump’s federal criminal cases. Smith charged Trump with four counts stemming from his conduct after the 2020 election, as he and others sought to overturn his defeat in that race.
That case appeared to be heading for a spring 2024 trial before Trump’s lawyers appealed a decision related to presidential immunity to the Supreme Court, which in July concluded former presidents cannot be prosecuted for official acts during their time in office.
In a separate federal criminal case in Florida, Trump was accused of mishandling sensitive government records. The judge dismissed the case in July, ruling Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel by the attorney general. Smith has appealed the decision.
If he had been convicted in the federal cases, he could have tried to pardon himself because the Constitution confers broad pardon power. But Trump can’t pardon himself from his New York conviction in a case stemming from a “hush money” payment because that’s a state offense. His sentencing date is set for Nov. 26, but it remains to be seen whether that will go forward.
Trump could simply move to dismiss the cases against him, said Mark Tushnet, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard Law School.
“He won’t have to pardon himself — as the chief executive and chief law enforcement office of the U.S. government, he can simply order that the prosecutions be dismissed,” Tushnet said.
In Fulton County, Georgia, Trump’s 2020 election interference case has been delayed amid allegations of impropriety against the district attorney. That delay is likely to now be extended.
Lead Trump attorney Steve Sadow told a judge in a hearing last December that proceedings would not be pushed off indefinitely if Trump won the presidency, suggesting 2029 is the year the trial could resume.
Exerting more influence on the Federal Reserve
Trump has given mixed responses on the future of the Federal Reserve chair he appointed in 2018, Jerome Powell. In February, Trump said he wouldn’t reappoint Powell.
But after Trump won this year’s presidential election, Powell said he would not leave if asked to resign by Trump. Powell’s term expires in 2026.
In February, Trump said he had a “couple of choices” for Fed chair, but didn’t say who those options might be.
Trump has accused Powell of being “political.” However, in July, he told Bloomberg Businessweek, “I would let him serve it out,” Trump said, and he added, “especially if I thought he was doing the right thing.”
Beyond the question of who would lead the Fed is a bigger issue: Trump has previously said he thinks the U.S. president should have more influence on Fed decisions — a risk to the central bank’s historical independence from political meddling, according to experts.
“I feel the president should have at least a say in there. Yeah, I feel that strongly,” Trump said in an Aug. 8 press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “I think that, in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
Trump will expect the Fed to support economic growth by continuing to ease borrowing costs for consumers and businesses while containing inflation. That amounts to a delicate balancing act, given some of the president-elect’s key economic policies, like imposing stiff new tariffs, boosting federal spending and deporting undocumented immigrants, could lead to higher prices.
Appointing new Supreme Court justices
Supreme Court justices sometimes try to time their retirements with a presidential administration corresponding to the party of the president who appointed them. When Trump takes office, there will be three justices who were appointed by previous Republican presidents — Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Trump nominated the other three members of the conservative wing during his first term — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Thomas is the longest-serving member of the court, having been nominated by President George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 1991. Roberts and Alito were both tapped for the court by President George W. Bush in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Thomas, 76, and Alito, 74, are also the two oldest members of the Supreme Court.
None of those three justices have publicly indicated an interest in leaving the Supreme Court.
Trump’s Supreme Court nominations during his first term widened the court’s conservative majority from 6-3, and replacing any of the three other members would maintain that ideological split.
Any nominations during Trump’s second term would likely be of younger judges who could serve for decades, ensuring a conservative hold on the court for years to come. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were in their 50s when he nominated them, and Barrett was 48.
Trump told CBS News in August that he’d release a list of potential Supreme Court nominees ahead of the election, but that list never arrived.
Deporting undocumented migrants en masse
At his final campaign stop in Pennsylvania before Election Day, Trump again promised to start mass deportations, but acknowledged “it’s terrible to do.”
“I don’t want to do that. I’m not looking to do that,” Trump said. “I think it’s terrible to do, but we have no choice.”
Nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. have been in the country a decade or more, and millions of them work and have families here. A concerted effort to round up, detain and deport people by the millions would not only raise legal and human rights concerns, it would cost billions of dollars a year.
But Trump told NBC News after winning the election that there is “no price tag.”
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he told NBC, adding, “We have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”
Trump has said he may start with deporting undocumented migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado — two communities targeted by his campaign rhetoric. He said in his debate with Harris that in Springfield, migrants were “eating the dogs” and cats, and said of Aurora that it was being overrun by Venezuelan gangs. Local and state officials of both parties disputed Trump’s claims.
Rolling back climate and clean energy policies
Trump has long cast doubts on the threat of climate change and prioritized increasing U.S. oil and gas production. “Drill, baby, drill” became a refrain at campaign rallies. He has vowed to unlock new lands for drilling, expedite drilling permits and speed up approval of natural gas pipelines.
Trump has also expressed desire to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act and redistribute any unspent climate funds, which, among other things, support electric vehicle production, EV tax credits, and incentives for battery production and critical mineral mining.
Such a move could prove unpopular with consumers, the automotive industry and even some members of his own party, who have recently supported certain programs funded by the IRA that have brought major manufacturing projects and jobs to conservative districts. Eliminating the individual tax credits for EV could be catastrophic for the automotive industry, which continues to see EV sales numbers grow, and many companies are basing production goals on these growing sales numbers. If the tax incentive is revoked, it would make EVs more expensive and harder to sell.
One of Trump’s most prominent backers, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has benefitted from EV incentives.
During his first term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, which included national goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Biden later rejoined the accords.
Trump’s record on climate issues has prompted warnings from scientists and climate activists about the accelerating dangers of failing to move rapidly toward clean energy and more sustainable development. “The science on climate change is unforgiving, with every year of delay locking in more costs and more irreversible changes,” said Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS.
Climate advocates say four more years of Trump policies will mean the most robust action to fight climate change will need to be pursued at the state and local level, as well as by the business sector.
Putting vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of health care
Kennedy’s name has been floated to oversee a variety of health-related issues in a second Trump administration, including to run the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s unclear, though, whether a nomination to a Cabinet position would receive the necessary support from Senate Republicans.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told CNN that the Senate will “give great deference to a president that just won a stunning, what I think is an Electoral College landslide when all is said is done and a mandate.”
“He’s being given a…
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